“Yeah, Tony. So that’s why she said I should stay out of it.”
Tony’s gaze was oddly admiring. “Why didn’t you?”
“I couldn’t do it,” Della answered. “Because . . . if he’d hurt me, and then my mother, well, I had to think what he might do to Sara, you know?”
Tony looked like a man who’d long expected terrible news but was only now getting the full report of just how terrible it was. “Thank you,” he said quietly, then reached out and touched her arm. “Thank you, Della.”
TONY
He’d been waiting for almost half an hour when his father’s dark blue Lincoln turned into the driveway. The Old Man drove the car himself now, the days when he’d been chauffeured around by some gorilla long gone. Tony knew that even in the old days his father had never been very high in the criminal pecking order. He’d carried himself like a big shot, though, smoked expensive cigars and dressed in fancy double-breasted suits, and hired muscle he didn’t need, usually some has-been boxer who chauffeured him from one crummy shylocking operation to the next. But now the great Leo Labriola was alone behind the wheel, a big, blustering man still, but one without backup.
“What are you doing here?” the Old Man said as he pulled himself out of the car. He was wearing flannel trousers and a floral shirt. In such attire he looked as if he should pass the autumn of his life playing pinochle in a retirement community in Florida instead of hiring some goon to track down a woman.
“What?” Labriola snapped. “What you looking at?”
“Nothing,” Tony said with a shrug.
“You curious?”
“What?”
“You curious where I been?”
“No.”
“With Belle,” Labriola said, his eyes daring Tony to say a word about it. “She blew me.”
“Jesus,” Tony said disgustedly.
“You don’t like it?” the Old Man barked.
Tony shrugged again. What did it matter what he liked or didn’t like about his father’s life? Belle Adriani had been the Old Man’s mistress for as long as Tony could remember, a bleached-blond club dancer with long fire- engine-red fingernails and a perpetual pout. Labriola had picked her up when she was twenty and had kept her as his personal sex slave ever since. Once he and his mother had run into them at a local street fair. His mother put her hand on Tony’s arm, led him in the opposite direction, and never uttered a word about it.
“Belle does what I tell her.” The Old Man laughed. “Not like that fucking hayseed you married.”
“We need to talk,” Tony said.
Labriola scowled, then elbowed past Tony and headed up the cement walkway that led to the house. When he reached the front steps, he turned toward his son. “Okay, so? Talk.”
“It’s about Sara,” Tony said.
The Old Man waved his hand. “That’s being taken care of.”
“How is it being taken care of?”
“I told you I’d find her.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“What difference does it make how I do it as long as it gets done?”
“You know anything about Eddie?”
“You mean that mick works for you? What about him?”
“He’s missing.”
Labriola laughed. “So what? Jesus, some fucking mick works for you goes missing and you think I know something about it? What’s the matter with you, Tony? What I got to do with this guy?”
“I need to know who’s looking for Sara,” Tony said.
Labriola glared at him. “You don’t need to know nothing I don’t want to tell you.”
“Who’s looking for Sara?” Tony demanded.
“What’s that got to do with this fucking mick?”
Tony started to answer, then stopped. If he told the truth, Caruso’s head was on the block.
“I want you to stop looking for Sara,” he said instead.
Labriola squinted, as if against an unexpected flash of light. “You what? You want me to stop looking for that—”
“Don’t call her names,” Tony blurted out.
“What, you a tough guy all of a sudden?”
“I mean it,” Tony said firmly. “Don’t call her names.”
“You’re still pussy-whipped, Tony. She’s still got you by the balls.”
“Stop looking for her,” Tony said.
Labriola’s face had become a smirking mask. “What, you think you can find her? You couldn’t find your own dick, Tony. And what if you did find her? You gonna beg her to . . .” He studied his son’s face for a moment, as if trying to read the mind behind it. Then he shrugged. “Okay,” he said lightly. “Okay, fine, Tony. You find her.” He grinned malevolently. “Good luck,” he said, then turned and trudged up the stairs, his great arms pumping massively, as if warming up for some final title fight, the great belt in contention now, the championship of the world.
FIVE
Someone to Watch Over Me
MORTIMER
He took his usual place at the dark end of the bar, and it struck him unpleasantly that he had always tended toward shadowy corners. Like a bug, he thought.
Jake stepped over and poured a drink. “You look like shit, Morty.” He gave the bar a quick wipe, then slid over a bowl of beer nuts. “Like shit,” he repeated like some doctor who was making sure his professional observation had not gone unnoted.
“Yeah,” Mortimer said. He knocked back the round. “Where’s Abe?”
“Back in his office,” Jake said.
“I hear he’s got a girlfriend,” Mortimer said, allowing himself the small pleasure that Abe had shared this intimacy. But that was what best friends did, wasn’t it, share things they didn’t share with other guys? It was the only thing that gave relief, he decided, the warmth of friendship, all that trust. “He told me about her,” he added as if displaying a medal he’d won for good service.
“She’s probably gonna work here,” Jake said absently.
“Doing what?”
“Singer, I guess.”
“No shit,” Mortimer said.
Jake indicated Mortimer’s empty glass. “Another?”
“Why not?”
Jake poured the drink and Mortimer took a quick sip. “Is she any good, Abe’s girl?” he asked.
“She ain’t bad. Coming in later tonight, Abe says. Gonna do a couple numbers.”
Mortimer rolled the glass between his hands and watched the amber liquid slosh back and forth. He could feel the weight of the pistol in his jacket pocket. He knew it wasn’t much to offer, just a way for Abe to defend himself if some tough guy showed up and started throwing his weight around. You wave a gun in a guy’s face, and he cools down right away, starts figuring the odds, decides the guy holding the piece is one serious bastard, and that the lady in question is by no means worth taking a bullet for.
And as for the piece, Mortimer thought, hell, he didn’t need it anyway. He wasn’t going to shoot anybody at this late date, and if somebody wanted to shoot him, so what? They’d shave off a few weeks at the most. And bad weeks at that. Hospital. Dottie fretting. Fuck it, Mortimer thought, now feeling oddly urgent about getting the gun to
